Bipolar Preorder
I can’t really explain it, other than maybe it’s due to overexposure.
Mere weeks ago, I was more excited about comics than I had been in some time. Civil War was starting, Infinite Crisis was ending, One Year Later was launching. It was an interesting time to be buying comics, especially for people who’d been consistenly paying attention over the past few years.
But now, the level of apathy I feel toward new comic book day is almost at the same level it was in the mid 90s when I gave up for six years or so. And I’m not really sure why.
I don’t feel like the quality of the books has dropped off. I’ve been very pleased with the seamless handoff from Bendis to Brubaker on Daredevil. I’m intrigued by the challenge of 52. I’m one of the many readers, few of whom use the internet, who is enjoying New Avengers.
But I didn’t really notice my lack of interest until two weeks ago, when I purchased an all-time personal record of 13 issues in one week. It took me 6 days to force myself through all of them, even though it included new issues of several of the aforementioned titles, in addition to some of my other recent favorites like X-Factor and Dead Girl.
This week, I only picked up 3 books and it was a chore to get through them. Not that they were bad or that I didn’t enjoy them for what they were – I just had no real desire to read them. It felt not like the joy of digging through the week’s haul and prioritizing what to read first and what to save to the end. More like when you get assigned a reading for homework and are pleased to find out that it was good.
I think I’m still buying comics out of a sense of obligation all of a sudden.
It’s a peculiar enough feeling that I don’t entirely trust it. I’m not going to stop going, because as soon as I do that, I figure I’ll get interested again and then I’ll have missed a couple weeks. And with my luck, it will be a couple of really important weeks.
But is anyone else going through this? Is quality slipping and I’m just being too easy on everything?
While I’m still plenty of excited by new comic day and I’m enjoying all the comics I read, I would really agree that things are just kind of boring right now. Civil War hasn’t taken off yet. The year-long-plus story that was Infinite Crisis is done. One Year Later is three months old. 52 is monumental only from a publishing standpoint. I might go deeper into it in a separate post, but rest assured, the feeling isn’t just you.
I’ve been feeling the exact same way. I may end up dropping the number of titles I get. I haven’t even gotten around to the store on Wednesdays the past couple weeks.